The Eighth Witch (23 page)

“Most cases have a crime, a victim and a perpetrator. And the perpetrator is just another criminal, not a bloody shape-shifter with some kind of supernatural power.”

“It’s the supernatural side that really bothers you, isn’t it?”

Sparks said nothing but finished his coffee and set his mug back down on the table.

“You’re not a skeptic at all, are you, Matt? You believe in it as much as I do.”

Sparks made a sound of annoyance in his throat and made to rise from his seat.

Lacey laid a restraining hand on his arm. “Sit down,” he said. “If we’re going to work together, we have to talk about this. Or else we’re going to keep on butting heads. And I have no wish to damage our working relationship. I think we’re a good team, you and I. I thought you did too.”

“It’s not easy,” Sparks said.

“What isn’t?”

“Talking about it.”

“Try me.”

Matthew Sparks stared off into space again. “I was brought up in a small village. Everyone knew everybody else, and knew everybody else’s business. When I was about eight I had a friend. Johnny Wilmott. Even then he was a bit of a tearaway, but he had a good side as well. There was an old, dilapidated house right on the edge of the village and two old ladies lived there. The Marsdens, Lucy and Effie. They were sisters, both spinsters and both crippled with arthritis. Johnny used to run errands for them—trips to the local shop to get provisions, he’d mow their lawn, clean their windows, that sort of thing. He had the edge over most of the local kids. None of them would go within a hundred yards of the Marsdens’ house, believing the local rumor mill, I guess. According to the stories spread by the kids, if you trespassed on their land, they’d turn you into a frog, or worse.”

“The kids thought they were witches?” Lacey said.

“Something like that. Two old ladies living on their own and they owned a black cat. You know what kids are like. We’d all seen
The Wizard of Oz
. Witches were evil.”

“But Johnny Wilmott didn’t think like the others?”

“No. To him, helping them out was a way of supplementing his pocket money. He took me round there once. The old ladies had invited him for tea and he dragged me along. I think, to him, it would be funny to see my reaction to them.”

“And how did you react?”

“I couldn’t wait to get out of there. The place stank. Camphorated oil and wintergreen mixed with boiled cabbage and cat’s piss. Horrible. That was bad enough, but the old ladies I just found weird. They had this huge, chintzy sofa, big, puffy cushions, and they sat, one at each end with Johnny in the middle. They were holding his hands, and they kept referring to him as their precious Johnny, or their baby. Looking back on it he had a very unhealthy relationship with them.

“They made us tea. Cucumber sandwiches and fruit cake. Even the food tasted odd, kind of scented. As soon as we’d eaten I told them I had to get home. They didn’t like that. As I said, they were old, probably in their seventies, but they didn’t dress like old ladies. They were both wearing pink dresses and it was obvious they both dyed their hair. A kind of rusty brown color. And their mouths were smeared with a hideous, orangey lipstick. Anyway, I said I was leaving and they turned rather nasty. Their Johnny wouldn’t be so rude, their Johnny wouldn’t eat their food and up and leave.

“I was making frantic eye contact with Johnny, trying to get him to back me up, but he just sat there, holding their hands, with a strange, faraway look on his face. Kind of dreamy. In the end he said, ‘Matthew, just go. We don’t want you here.’ But his voice wasn’t his own. Weird.”

“What do you mean, wasn’t his own?”

“It was flat, lifeless. As if he were reading the words aloud from a script.”

“So did you go?”

“Oh yes. I couldn’t get out of the house quick enough. I was only eight, but I remember being overwhelmed by the feeling that if I didn’t leave, right then, I would never get away.”

“And Johnny stayed?”

“I left him sitting there, holding hands with the two old ladies, with them cooing over him as if he were some kind of pampered pet.”

“And that’s it?”

Matthew Sparks shook his head. “I wish,” he said. “I wish.” He stood, went across to the canteen, ordered two coffees and brought them back to the table.

“I never saw Johnny Wilmott again after that.”

“What happened to him?”

“To this day no one knows. He never went home after his visit to the Marsden house. I think, at the time, his parents thought he might have run away—as I said, he was a bit of a tearaway—but when he didn’t return that night or the next day, the police were called in and a full-scale search of the area was undertaken. The police interviewed me as I’d been with him that afternoon. I told them about the Marsden sisters and they went round to talk to them. They told them that Johnny had left a little after five o’clock. I think they searched the house, to see if he had decided to hide out there, but they found nothing.”

“And I take it he was never found,” Lacey said.

Sparks shook his head. “Not a trace of him. After a year his parents sold up and moved to Leeds, and that was the end of that.”

He took a mouthful of coffee.

“A few years later…I would have been about sixteen…I went back to the Marsden house. The old ladies were long dead and the place had been boarded up. A couple of my mates decided it would be a bit of a laugh to break into the place. We had a few of the local girls with us and we’d been drinking cider. I think the plan was to tell the girls a few exaggerated ghost stories, give them a bit of a scare to make them a bit more…amenable.

“We forced our way in through a window at the back where the boards had rotted and found ourselves in the kitchen. The girls were giggling and my two mates were coming up with all manner of stories about the house.”

“And you?”

“Oh, I wasn’t an innocent in all this by any means. I was a teenager with testosterone on overdrive. I was up for it as much as my mates were. I had vague, uncomfortable memories of my last visit to the house, but nothing powerful enough to deter me.
 

“I’m not really sure how I ended up on my own. Perhaps the others went upstairs—who knows now? And it doesn’t really matter anyway. I had a flashlight and, even at sixteen, I was certainly big enough to look after myself. So being in the house, ostensibly alone, didn’t really bother me.

“I made my way through the house. I reached the parlor where Johnny and I had taken tea with the old ladies. The door was closed but I could hear voices coming from the room. I put my ear to the door and listened. I suppose I should have left the house there and then, just turned and walked away, but something made me grab the door handle and twist it.” Sparks stopped speaking. A film of perspiration had coated his brow, and when he picked up his coffee mug Lacey noticed that his hand was shaking slightly. He looked up. “Sorry,” he said.

“In your own time, Matt.”

“It’s just that this is the first time I’ve told this story in nearly twenty years. It’s a bit of a shock to me just how vivid the memories are.”

“So, you were alone, downstairs in the house, you hear voices from the parlor and you opened the door.”

Matthew Sparks nodded. “I opened the door and stepped into the room. The table was laid out for tea, as it’s been the last time I was there. Plates of sandwiches, two cakes, cups and saucers and a china pot of tea. Lucy and Effie Marsden were sitting either side of the table, still wearing those ridiculous pink dresses. As I opened the door and walked in they turned and smiled at me. ‘Matthew,’ they said, their voices blending together, almost becoming just one voice. ‘How kind of you to come and visit us. Look, Johnny, your friend Matthew’s come to visit. Perhaps you can go and play in the garden after tea.’”

“Johnny Wilmott was there too?” Lacey said.

“Johnny was sitting between them at the head of the table,” Sparks said, his voice tremulous. “He was sitting in this weird, giant-sized high chair, Ian. In a fucking high chair! The two old ladies were both holding spoons, dipping them into a bowl of what looked like porridge, and then shoving the mess into his mouth. And Johnny… Johnny just looked vacant, staring at me like some kind of imbecile, porridge and spittle dribbling down his chin as he chewed and swallowed.

“The old ladies were smiling at him, like a couple of doting parents. ‘It’s so good to have our baby home,’ they said. Their baby, for fuck’s sake!”

Sparks faltered again. His face had reddened and there were tears pushing out from behind his eyes.

“What happened next?” Lacey said encouragingly.

“I’m not really sure. One of the boys I was with burst into the room and slapped me across the back. ‘There you are, Sparky,’ he said. ‘We thought you’d buggered off and left us.’

“It broke the spell. When I looked back into the room the old ladies and Johnny had gone. There was just an old table and a few broken chairs. We got out of there. The next morning I told my dad what I’d seen at the Marsden house. Dad was an old-time copper. Was in the force over thirty years and never made it above constable.”

“And what did he say?”

“Told me to stop being so bloody stupid and asked if I was doing drugs.”

“And you never told anyone else what you saw?”

Sparks shook his head. “Until now.”

“A hell of a thing to carry around with you,” Lacey said. “A hell of a thing. If it’s any consolation, Matt, I believe you. And I want you to stay on this case with me.”

The doors to the Fox and Goose opened and Robert Carter entered the pub. Lacey shook himself out of his reverie and joined him at the bar. “You’re late.”

“Sorry,” Carter said and ordered two beers from the barman. “Something’s come up.”

“Connected to the case?”

“I think so, yes,” Carter said.

“Well, let’s go and sit down and you can tell me all about it.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

After listening to what Carter had to say, Lacey sat back in his seat and folded his arms. “The question I’m asking myself is, why are they still alive?”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Carter said.

“Think about it. Your friend Martin, hospitalized in London, Henry Norton in hospital up here, both in comas, or something similar, granted, but both still very much alive. Ollie Tucker and the tanker driver, Scott, dead, both killed in bizarre circumstances. And all the others, the Gillespies, Susan Grant, Helen Brown, Sylvia Allyn and Amy Clarke, none of them spared. But Norton and your friend survive. Why do you think that is?”

Carter shook his head. “At the moment I haven’t a clue. I need to do some more digging. You were going to tell me about the Yardley sisters. Let’s start there.”

“Fair enough,” Lacey said. “Remember, all I know about them is what my grandmother told me. According to her, they were a family of witches hailing from Pendle, who’d fled their home after being persecuted by a local magistrate who wanted to get his hands on their land. They settled in the Calder Valley and quickly established themselves within the community. You have to remember that witchcraft was viewed differently in those days. These women were perceived as healers, wise women who the local population would go to for all sorts of reasons. They were revered and trusted and they, in turn, were very protective of their new home and the people who lived here.”

“That’s not what I was expecting,” Carter said. “You make them seem like paragons of virtue. Pillars of the community.”

“That’s how they were viewed. There were seven of them, the seven sisters. Elizabeth was the eldest, followed closely by Rachel and Rebecca, twins, and there was Alice, Ruth, Megan and finally Elinor, the youngest. From what I can remember it was Elinor who was the rebel. Nan never spoke much about her but I gather she was a wild child in today’s terminology. She flirted with black magic as much as she did with men. My grandmother made it clear she didn’t approve of her.”

“Do you know if there were any children?”

“Nan never mentioned it, but then she wouldn’t. She had very staunch Victorian values and there were some things she thought inappropriate to speak about. But that’s not to say there weren’t any.”

“Have you checked the parish records for that period?” Carter said.

Lacey shook his head. “I’ve had no call to. This was just a story my gran used to tell me. I had no idea it would have any relevance to cases I’d be working on today.”

“So what happened to the seven sisters? Did they live out safe and happy lives in the valley? Somehow I suspect not.”

“And you’d be right. As I said, they were persecuted by a Lancashire magistrate eager to get his hands on their land. Jacob Barker was a pretty ruthless character. Over the space of a number of years he sent groups of men across the border into Yorkshire to hunt down and kill the Yardley sisters. A kind of black ops strategy. Totally illegal, of course, but Barker wielded a lot of power and he got away with it. The sisters had spread out across the valley, with the twins, Rachel and Rebecca, settling in Ravensbridge. The people in the area gave them a lot of protection, but Barker’s men were relentless and one by one the sisters succumbed. The twins were the last to be killed. Barker’s men caught up with them here in Ravensbridge when they were visiting a local farmer who’d had a fall and broken his ankle tending his sheep. They killed Rachel and Rebecca in the most horrible way imaginable, and then went on to kill the farmer and his entire family.”